To hear al­most any Re­pub­lic­an law­maker speak in post-shut­down Wash­ing­ton is to hear that Demo­crats are re­fus­ing to ne­go­ti­ate to re­open the gov­ern­ment and avert a debt de­fault. It’s a talk­ing point that may be selling well, but it’s only true if you ig­nore any­thing that happened be­fore last Monday at about 11 p.m.

Re­pub­lic­ans think they’ve hit talk­ing-point gold with the mes­sage, as we learned from a can­did “hot mic” mo­ment last week when Sen. Rand Paul privately told fel­low Ken­tucki­an Mitch Mc­Con­nell that he didn’t think Demo­crats had “poll-tested” the “aw­ful” mes­sage. ” ‘It’s my way or the high­way.’ That’s what he’s say­ing. Com­plete sur­render, and then we’ll talk to you,” House Speak­er John Boehner told ABC News on Sunday.

In a sense, Re­pub­lic­ans are right. Demo­crats view keep­ing the gov­ern­ment open and out of de­fault as Con­gress’s most ba­sic job, and the char­ac­ter­ize any­thing that threatens that as “ransom,” so they say they’re not will­ing to come to the table un­til the gov­ern­ment re­opens. But, in con­text, the GOP’s biggest talk­ing point of the shut­down falls apart when you con­sider that Demo­crats only star­ted re­fus­ing to ne­go­ti­ate after Re­pub­lic­ans stopped, the hour be­fore the gov­ern­ment shut down a week ago.

For in­stance, through a Sen­ate Demo­crat­ic aide, here are all the times since this spring Sen­ate Demo­crats tried to ne­go­ti­ate with Re­pub­lic­ans by send­ing their budget to a bicam­er­al con­fer­ence com­mit­tee. Every time, Re­pub­lic­ans blocked the move:

“For six months I’ve tried to enter in­to form­al budget ne­go­ti­ations with Paul Ry­an, only to be re­peatedly denied per­mis­sion to ne­go­ti­ate by Ted Cruz and the tea party,” said Sen­ate Budget Com­mit­tee Chair­wo­man Patty Mur­ray, D-Wash. “Now, a week in­to a gov­ern­ment shut­down that he could end at a mo­ment’s no­tice, Speak­er Boehner is simply try­ing to dis­tract from his con­stantly chan­ging list of de­mands.”

The parties flipped po­s­i­tions Monday, the first day of the new fisc­al year, when Re­pub­lic­ans tried to fi­nally start con­fer­ence-com­mit­tee ne­go­ti­ations just minutes be­fore mid­night. Demo­crats balked — “We will not go to con­fer­ence with a gun to our head,” Sen­ate Ma­jor­ity Lead­er Harry Re­id said on the floor — con­sid­er­ing that they had been re­buffed al­most 20 times be­forer and that Re­pub­lic­ans had shown no in­terest un­til it was already clear the gov­ern­ment was clos­ing. Last week, House Ma­jor­ity Lead­er Eric Can­tor tweeted a pic­ture of a faux con­fer­ence com­mit­tee, which in­cluded zero Demo­crats, say­ing, “We sit ready to ne­go­ti­ate with the Sen­ate.”

Per­haps we could have avoided a shut­down if they had been ready to ne­go­ti­ate be­fore the gov­ern­ment ran out of money.